February 26th, 2016

February 26th, 2016

9:41 am

I had a little disagreement- verging towards a fight- with a friend of mine on facebook yesterday, and I'm still going over it in my mind. A part of me wanted to tear into him, dredging up all sorts of marginally relevant past history. No one can hurt you like a friend can- and in this case I'm talking about me to him. There's nothing he could say to me that doesn't apply to him a hundred fold, and for that reason he can't touch me, like only I've got the nuclear codes. I think I must be a little scary to him?

It's tiring enough to always have to defend him against other people, I don't like the idea of having to defend him from myself.

I took the subway to the Qingniwaqiao Web center where I was to finally meet with the HR person and get my fingerprint entered into the clock-in system. Interesting note, this HR person spelled my name wrong, and said she would correct it later- and she did! Plot twist!

Afterwards I went back to Victory Plaza to get some sweet chicken pieces at the store I found last time. The store owner was happy to see me return, and she asked me a few questions, where I'm from, what I'm doing in China, through an interpreter from another store "Kung Fu Cheese" who was having lunch there. The Kung Fu Cheese guy asked me if they liked cheese in Canada- and if dating profiles are anything to go by the answer is an overwhelming yes- and invited me to stop by his store next time I was around.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about what I should do for my English Corner today- my previous Hamlet talk didn't go so well, my fault for choosing a repetitive section, and I thought maybe the students needed a brain break from Shakespeare. I was trying to think of something to do with The Notebook, or Sexiest Man Alive- you know, something half the class would really dig. I got to the Roosevelt Web center and had just enough time to send my backlog of blog posts to Cool Geoff before I was approached by Adam and then also joined by a newer student whose name I don't know. 

They asked if I had work to do- say, preparing my English Corner, and I said I did, but we could talk anyways. We talked about rollercoasters, the joys of getting sick (Adam: "When you're sick, friends you haven't seen in a while will call you, and maybe buy you presents." That's positive thinking!). When Dany arrived at work to claim his chair beside mine, the party looked like it was over, but I said why don't we keep chatting in the English Corner area? They thought it was a great idea.

We started talking about Hamlet, and I was greatly pleased to find out that they could tell me everything that had happened so far! And they're enjoying it! What! They gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going with Hamlet for that day as well- but the girl whose name I don't know also said I could do a sort of "day in the life" English Corner about life in Canada, which is a fun idea to have in my back pocket. Also, through the course of being encouraging, Adam had a ton of nice things to say about me: I did the ol' "uh-huh, yeah, and more and more..." bit, but it was very sweet. Apparently I'm NOT an asshole- someone should tell facebook.

Okay, but now I really did have to go prepare for my day of classes, I jammed through the first bit of scene three of Hamlet for any tough words- there was one phrase that I couldn't immediately translate into an easier idea, and an internet search didn't help either- I'll tell you know, that was an awkward moment during my English Corner.

My first class was with Queena and Queenie (I... am not sure which is which), Bill, who is so cute and happy my eyes water, and Vera, who was wearing some new glasses. So the first thing I asked them was whether or not they knew who Superman was. I drew a rough Supes on the board, and they all said they did- and then I told them about how he actually has a job at a newspaper, but that they don't know he's Superman, he calls himself Clark Kent, and the reason nobody knows he's Superman is because he wears glasses, so... who's this? My attendance sheet says Vera (okay, well, it has a Chinese name I pretended to read, if the attendance sheet had her English name written on it I wouldn't have had so much trouble learning her name) but there's no Vera here, just some new girl with glasses.

It was a lot of set-up for a pretty simple gag, but it was worth it, everyone laughed, and Vera said "that's right, I'm Superwoman". I remember my first class with Vera, not too long ago, she didn't say much, shy, maybe worried about answering wrong. She's still all those things, but she's also very clearly more comfortable and more ready to answer. It makes me smile. Bill answers more, too, now that I think about it!

My English Corner had a surprise guest sitting near the front, a girl from Qingniwaqiao that I remember, red brown shoulder length hair with, I think, a new streak of purple, roundish glasses, light skin with some freckles- in the class I had with her I recall her English was relatively solid. She seemed pleased to be remembered, and also seemed interested in the presentation. Today was all about Laertes, who we'd seen before, and Ophelia ("who's that?" let me answer that in a second... two lines in, Laertes refers to "sister", easy answer) as well as old people that go on and on giving you advice that you already know- Polonius! At the back was another student I'd never seen before, a large gentleman, sort of hunched over, yawning a lot- like some sleepy bear. I thought he was bored out of his mind, but he's the guy that came up to me after class, shook my hand and thanked me, and said it was good and funny.

Here's the two hour break, and when my previously mentioned internet disagreement happened. I'm not a hundred percent on this, but I feel like I may have been a bit shocked, a little adrenalin may have been pumping, I left to eat and only picked up some beef and mushroom dish as well as a bowl of the yellow porridge business. I ate alone at first, but Bradley came up with Stella, Grace and another person whose name I don't have locked down, and I asked to join them.

Impressively, as we were eating Bradley looked at my tray and said that I usually get more to eat- I thought that was very perceptive of him, and I told him so.

My next class was that one where the students share some research about a famous historical figure: Henry did Steve Jobs, Cindy did Napoleon, and Walker, a student I'd never met before, but is someone I'd absolutely watch a tv show about, who studies navigation, talked about Magellan.

Henry kept his pretty simple, so there were few corrections needed, Walker kept dropping the past tense "-ed" from things, but I told him the good side was that, because he did it SO much, he wouldn't make that mistake again in the future- in fact, as we kept going over his assignment he started adding the "-ed" before I had to mention it. Nice!

And Cindy had only prepared a simple timeline of events for Napoleon, making up the sentences on the spot- and she did a wonderful job! There was only one thing I told her to correct, but other than that it was perfect- I was perhaps overly effusive with my praise, but I was honestly impressed.

Next was a salon with a full roster: Jessi, Sunny (a new one I'd never met before), Bill, Walker, Daisy, Sherry, Shark, Baron, Sam, and Henry. We talked about Can vs. Will (similar to the Can vs. May distinction people harp on in the west), so the first part of the class was getting everyone to tell me something they could do, and I wrote it on the board, it was a nice little positive exercise- Sam can play a little violin? What! Awesome! I said how much I love the violin and it sounded like he offered to give me one... I don't think your parents would like that- "my dad would". Maybe his dad doesn't like the sound of violin practicing? That's the best explanation I've got if I heard him correctly.

Then we moved on to degrees of propbability- will, probably will, may, probably won't, will not, that sort of thing. It was straightforward, but there was a decent amount of student talking time, which is the ultmate goal for the salon classes especially.

My last class was with Shark, Nina, and another Sunny. After asking about their weekend plans- Shark is taking a business trip to Beijing, he's a furniture salesman, a good one- Shark, I believe it!- Nina is taking her six year old daughter to pick strawberries, and Sunny is probably going to see a movie- we just had to answer some questions about a guy from the computer courseware, very straightforward- we got to a question that required explaining the distinction between can and will, so I recruited Shark to explain from what he learned in our previous class together. Eventually we got to a section of the lesson where I again had to talk about degrees of probability, though this lesson introduced a few more degrees, with a few more vocabulary options- or "alternative" options.

To explain "alternative" I wrote "vanilla, chocolate, strawberry" on the board, circled chocolate, and pointed to the other options as alternatives, other choices you could have made. But they were all mystified by the word "vanilla"! I didn't expect that, it was funny.

And that was it for me that day. I did laundry at home. Played pokemon. Ate the last of the fruit snacks that tear through my system. Obsessed over that facebook exchange. Same old, same old. - 11:37 am